All regular users of Outlook will undoubtedly be familiar with the date picker available at the points in the program where dates can be entered, however, what many people don’t realise is that it’s also possible to type dates directly in a variety of formats.

e.g. when booking an appointment for 6 weeks into the future, it’s not necessary to work out the date, just type in ‘6w’ in the appropriate box and the date will be calculated for you. Additionally, if you are booking an appointment on Monday, that is for 6 weeks from Thursday, then enter ‘6w3d’ and the date will be calculated for you. The system will also accept ‘mo’ for Month, and ‘y’ for year.

You can perform similar tasks in time fields by using ‘h’ for hour, and ‘m’ for minute. When entering times it’s not necessary to enter the whole time, Outlook will interpret 1015 as 10.15am and 2215 as 10.15pm. (Outlook generally works with a 24hr clock, if you want to use am / pm, to achieve the same result, type either 1015a or 1015p.